Review: Google Chromecast Audio

21/07/2016

Last week’s Currys PC World Christmas in July event featured a particularly great goodie bag for gadget lovers. The first things I pulled out were a Google Chromecast and a Google Chromecast Audio. Now I’ve heard of the Chromcast before (and more on that later) but the Chromecast Audio was completely new to me.

The thing was that I couldn’t quite understand what the point of it was. And chatting to the friend that I roped in to pull together a video review for me, neither could he initially.

So the idea behind the Chromecast Audio is that you use it to “cast” (or in non Google language “play”) your music from your phone or tablet to your speakers by making them wi-fi enabled. The little device plugs into your speakers via a short little 3.5mm cable (you can also use an RCA or optical input, but you need to provide your own cable to do so) and supported music or audio apps then have a “cast” button which allows you to direct the audio to your speakers.

That all sounds fine in theory, but I’m not totally sure exactly when *I* would want to do that. At home I might play music from my laptop and want to hear it on my stereo in the living room, but that’s already wi-fi enabled so I can do it without needing anything extra. The times when I am wanting to play something from my phone on a speaker, I’ve taken to just using a portable rechargeable bluetooth speaker, or I can even connect my phone to my bedside clock radio via bluetooth. And when I think back to the last time I was in a shop looking at radios and speakers most of them seemed to either have a dock for a phone or iPod, or they were bluetooth enabled to allow you to connect a device that way. My kitchen radio (which I admit I mainly just use for DAB) is also already connected to the internet so I can use it directly to find internet radio stations and listen via that.

Thinking about it some more though I suppose the answer might be people who don’t have everything networked already (forgive me, it’s because we’re gadget geeks) or maybe only have a phone or tablet rather than a laptop or PC with music on. Or if you’re wanting to bring back into use a old stereo or pair of speakers that you can’t network any other way. At just £30 a pop it would certainly be an easy and inexpensive way to do so and it’s making me think I possibly shouldn’t rush to bung the speakers in our loft onto eBay.

Anyway – enough of when to use Chromecast Audio and over to my friend Kyle who kindly offered to demonstrate what you get inside the box and how it works.

The Chromecast Audio is available from Currys here where it currently retails at £30.

Disclaimer: I was provided with a Google Chromecast Audio in a goodie bag from Currys PC World. I was not specifically asked to review it. All opinions remain my own.